Hannah's sales experience comes from her years as a Girl Scout. Ever since she was a Brownie, she has been asking people to buy Thin Mints and Shortbread. It's not always easy.

Sure, most people like Girl Scout cookies. And then there's the goodwill that comes from knowing a sale of a pricey box will help fund volunteer projects and horseback riding trips for young girls.

Hannah still gets plenty of rejection.

"Sometimes they're grumpy. And sometimes they ignore us," she said of potential customers.

But if she ends up trying out a more refined sales pitch this year — and especially if she tries to talk up the newest cookie varieties — it might be because she spent a few hours with a pair of marketing pros this weekend.

Girls from Hannah's troop were among a group of about 70 people — mostly fifth- and sixth-graders from Naples to Palmetto — who gathered on the campus of Florida Gulf Coast University on Saturday to learn marketing strategies. Their teachers were two local women who earn their living by convincing doctors to prescribe Procter & Gamble products.

What pharmaceutical representative Lily Stark does day to day — visiting with numerous doctors and leaving lots of free samples — may seem at first very different from what the Girl Scouts do with their cookie sales once a year.

But Stark, a Bonita Springs resident, said even selling a box of cookies can get a little easier with some good marketing.

For example, giving out free samples is a strategy she suggested the Scouts try with some of their less-popular varieties. And even simply taking a "no" from someone with a quiet nod and a sad look — as some girls said they did — might work.

"I said, ‘hey, guilt is good. Guilt works.'¤"

After watching the girls practice various sales pitches and invent advertisements for other products they helped dream up — such as bubble gum that changes flavor every half hour — Stark was impressed.

"There are some little girls here that I wouldn't mind getting their phone numbers in 20 years," she said. "They're going to be good sellers."

As for the girls, some said the suggestions they heard might be helpful. Others said they'd already learned many of the tricks Stark called "marketing" through trial and error.

One troop leader from Fort Myers, Leni Kuchta, said many girls in her troop would like to own their own business — fashion design companies are a popular goal — and she was hoping the workshop would give them a glimpse of what that would take.

At the very least, they all earned a badge, and as cookie season is already under way in the area, Cecilia St. Arnold, who helped organize the workshop, said the hope was the girls could take everything they learn and apply it right away.

St. Arnold works for the Junior Achievement of Southwest Florida, a nonprofit that runs programs to teach practical business skills to children. This was the second year the organization invited local businesswomen to lead a one-day marketing skills workshop for Girl Scouts.